A Ballad of Fangs and Claws
by Chris Walker
Summary: After Outworld's forces are repelled during Shinnok's fall, Reptile is left behind in the ensuing chaos. A small force from the Lin Kuei is quickly dispatched in an attempt to track him down, hoping only to ease the misguided hostilities between the realms. Among the party's number is Khameleon — a bearer of strange abilities, and one who finds her fate tied to the last Zaterran's.


**Just as a brief foreword, I chose to make this fic in the case that our favorite Raptor's MKX ladder ending was non-canon. I hope you enjoy it!**

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Reptile's clawed feet, once treading so quickly upon the soft, grassy earth, had come to a firm halt. Where the Zaterran, a paragon to his fallen race, now stood was within a dark forest native to Earthrealm. The trunks of the many trees extended far above the floor of the expansive, thick and untouched woodland all around him. The sun was partially hidden over the far horizon, ducking behind the likes of the snow-capped mountains. Mountains that the denizen of Outworld sought to reach.

Reptile himself was a being who blended in well with this environment. His sinewy, green, scaled body was dressed in a black combative garb, decorated and armored with the sun-bleached bones of great creatures he had killed in the past. Over his mouth and concealing much of his eponymous reptilian face was a metallic mask of an odd design that suited him well, being able to part with his jaws and allow his mouth to unleash its often deadly capabilities upon what he saw fit.

And Reptile was not alone. Below him lay the fresh, corpse of a brown-furred deer, killed in a single blow to the back of its thick neck by the Zaterran after he silently raced up to its side, dispatching it before it could detect his scent. And it was not a kill for sport, but for food. His extraordinarily long tongue left his mouth and returned to it in a brief flicker of red in anticipation of his coming meal. And once his breath from the brief hunt was caught, he started.

Kneeling down onto his knees by dead beast's side, Reptile's sharpened claws dug viciously into it, tearing through fur, bone and muscle with ease. He ripped out many bloody chunks into his palms and then practically shoveled the red meat into his mouth, swallowing each of them whole and without issue.

With a sense of haste in his motions he did this, spending not a dear second idle. He had not eaten a single scrap of honest food in nearly a week until he caught this deer, yet he suspected for sure that he would have no time to enjoy this meal, much less finish it. Even now, with the precious quiet surrounding him, he was being hunted by Earthrealm forces. Forces in the form of the warrior clan known as the Lin Kuei.

Reptile hadn't encountered any of the Lin Kuei's ever-following footsoldiers for almost two days now, but he knew that they weren't far behind. They were tracking him. Human as they may have been, they were clearly led by professionals in the field, given the several times they had nearly caught his nimble self now. Even when he bothered to cover his tracks they remained as hot on his tail as a kindled flame upon a dry branch of wood.

This slippery predicament worried him greatly, but what troubled him far worse was the thoughts on what they would do to him if he fell into their hands. When Reptile looked to his instincts for guidance on that matter, all they told him to do was to keep running. Run until he found some way back to his home in Outworld. Run without a care for anything else. Run until he could run no longer.

But instincts alone were not what he acted on.

Eventually his current perturbation and paranoid awareness began to mollify into something far more dull, but no less weighty. The reason for his lowering guard was a simple one, and one his aching, weary body welcomed reluctantly. The calm serenity of this place, like a comfortable nest that was practically welcoming him into its homely fold, was too much for the battle-worn Zaterran to ignore forever. His emerald eyes, with their vertical pupils like thin black slits, turned upward from the deer as to look at it better. His feasting began to gradually slow as the minutes wore on and he knew, for almost certain, that he was in no danger of attack or ambush from his foes.

Lifting an empty hand up from his kill, Reptile wiped some running beads of blood from his lipless mouth upon its knuckle and took another good look out to the forested terrain ahead of himself. Observing his surroundings with all of his senses, he wanted to savor every drop that this still peace could afford him, while it lasted.

Steadily did the wind drift by and along his rough, virescent flesh. The birds flew about in the sky above on that same breeze, their many calls adding to the soft ambiance. Watching closely with his acute gaze, Reptile witnessed insects climbing and scuttling along the coarse, sappy bark of the evergreen trees making up much of this forest, about its grassy floor, and some were even upon the corpse of the deer, partaking in its bounty.

Indeed, there was a grand image of beauty and tranquility in all that went on, however great or small it was. It held firm and unyielding in its natural splendor, even with the image of this carcass he currently dug into. It was, after all, yet another piece of the landscape that this lustrous life had a chance to touch and mold into something else of use and nourishment to the ecosystem. Yes, this was truest pulchritude in its most basic form — at least when conflict was away and nature had the chance to reign uninterrupted.

Earthrealm... this place was unfamiliar to the Raptor, and yet so strangely... _captivating_. It was of quite little wonder as to why though, for Reptile knew of its relevance to his kind. Should all the knowledge he had accrued from old texts and the words of record-keeping sages serve him well and true, this plane of existence once served as the original habitat of his species, being where they had evolved into their sapient state of existence from simple, primitive dinosaurs. A devastating cataclysm came upon them one day, however, whereupon the Saurians fled to the realm of Zaterra, claiming the untouched world as their own and renaming themselves thusly.

Their proud, scale-clawed rule over Zaterra lasted for many undocumented centuries, the newfound peace only being shattered for good by the arrival of the power-hungry Shao Kahn of Outworld. After he conquered their realm with little effort and merged it with his own, he just as easily wiped the Raptors all out, save for one individual whom the then-Emperor of Outworld saw some use in — Reptile himself.

And Reptile served. Every command of the mighty and merciless warlord was carried out with as much precision as could be afforded, every whim obeyed as an act of true loyalty. He did so not out fear as so many of his fellow underlings expressed, but _hope_ , for Shao Kahn had promised Reptile that he would restore his race to the glorious state they were prior, but only if he proved his worth. Alas, the emperor never fulfilled that wish in all the years the endling had faithfully served him, and now Shao Kahn was gone; dead, destroyed, imprisoned... Reptile cared little of his former master's fate now.

Regardless, his ambitions then soured into a most horrid form of desperation. He had lost his greatest possibility of resurrecting the Raptor race, and he was almost willing to do whatever it took to get another chance at it. But not all was lost, for he soon discovered a ray of golden light in the abyss he had fallen into.

With no one else to turn to in such a dire and chaotic time, he placed all of his remaining loyalty and belief in the eventual restoration of the Zaterrans into the reliable hands of the Osh-Tekk warrior Ko'atal — now known as Outworld's most recent ruler and its true emperor, Kotal Kahn. Unlike his warmongering predecessor, Kotal Kahn was proven to be a trustworthy character. Many times had he shown himself to be man of his word, a valued friend, and one who held honor and the values of his people above all else; Reptile's included. But also unlike Shao Kahn, Kotal lacked the sheer power to accomplish such lofty feats on his own.

With yet another setback there to plague him, Reptile feared that he would have been driven to madness by his desires for the familiar companionship of his fallen race long ago, had his ally's honeyed words of confidence and hope not kept his heart and mind in the right place for all this while. That hope still burned within him, but given his current situation, he was afraid that not even that would be enough of a drive to aid in his escape. Why he was here now was a dreadful predicament all in itself.

Earthrealmers who originally came to Outworld to recover the stolen amulet of the fallen Elder God Shinnok implored the emperor for his aid, and after realizing that same item was at fault for the latest catastrophes threatening his rule, he agreed. With the combined efforts of the Kahn's forces and those of the humans, they took back the amulet before any further harm could be committed. The emperor, however, decided not to let them leave with it. He planned on imprisoning the relic as he willed it after seeing it fall so easily out of Earthrealm's hands and wreak havoc upon his dominion, but such thoughts were snuffed out no sooner than they were formed when one of the emperor's greater servants, the Kytinn D'Vorah.

She betrayed Outworld in one fell swoop by stealing the amulet and using the scorned Earthrealmers to aid her. Without a second to spare, Kotal Kahn marshaled his forces, Reptile among them, and pursued them to Earthrealm, only to have his assault repulsed by a detrimental ambush performed by the Lin Kuei. While the majority of Outworld's forces managed to retreat by the same manner they had entered this place, Reptile had not been among the lucky ones.

Now he was fleeing like a hunted animal through the alien wilderness of his ancestral home. Even while the future was clouded with a most dreadful murk, he held onto some scraps of faith that his leader would save him from his predicament. Kotal Kahn had immense sorceries at his disposal, perhaps enough to properly enact his rescue, but Reptile knew not how long it would take the emperor to both locate him or materialize such power without inciting further incident against this world and its guardians that he had so brazenly offended.

That faith, and this temporary peace, managed to send such troubling thoughts away as Reptile started finishing his meal. When he felt as though he had consumed enough, the Raptor stood up with his long, forked tongue lapping up the last of the gore to stain his scaly hands. When they were clean and he felt set to travel onward, Reptile took off. His legs pushing himself along as though he was the wind itself, he dashed off through the woodland with the intent of finding a suitable spot to rest and digest his food; for a short while, at least. A spot far away from wherever those accursed Lin Kuei currently resided...


End file.
